Just call me GI Jane

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I am now in Costa Rica....which for the record isthe most beautiful country i have ever been too...loads of mountains and volcanoes, and something crazy like 75% of the country is a protected nature reserve.....and its also very very very very hot...

continuing the story....offi went to see somemore volcanoes...no lava but one was happilysmoking away and really did smell quite bad, amusingly in the carpark there wereloads of signstelling people to park their cars facing the exit due to the fact that the volcano could erupt at any time and there probably wouldnt be time to initiatea reversing move...however such signs did not stop us traipsing around the rim ofthe crater...and at some points the wind was so strong i was genuinely quite worried that the skinnier people were about to become another set of sacrificial victims for the volcano gods..not beingskinny i had nothing to worry about!..after that we headed to a lake which had formed in the crater of a now extinct volcano and spent the afternoon swimming and drinking....also encountered a smallchild who was playing with a toilet full of wee...which added another level of amusement to the day...\

after leaving granada we headed to ometepe, which is an island formed by the two volcanoes which are on it...this timei elected not to climb the volcano,butinstead chose to go on what was described as a gentle walk to a waterfall....the gentle walk turned out to be athree hour uphill hike in the boiling midday sun...luckily i survived tho, and felt that the cubalibres were well deserved that night, didnt do much elseon ometepe, apart from find out why they call this the rainy season!....

after leaving ometepe we bid goodbye to nicaragua and headed into costa rice....got 2 stamps at this border crossing so i was pleased!...and headed to monteverde....monteverde is a small town up in the cloud forests....so the first thing we did was a guided tour around the cloud forest, this was great as the guide new everything about the entire forest...every leaf, bug etcall had a massive explanationto go with it!....apparently the reason why most people go there is to spot a bird called a quetzal,which is apparently very rare...neither me nor any of my friends had heard of this bird before...but within 10 mins of being thereone guy managed to spotit...sending the professional guides into a frenzy and us whilst appreciating it is a pretty bird wondering what all the fuss was about...

after the cloud forest walk that is where the real fun began....we went zip lining thru the rainforest....this involved being harnessedto the zip wireandzipping thru the forest...at heights from65mupwards...at one point we justwent thru a cloud and you couldnt see anything else whatsoever..which was supercool.....these lines did pick up some speed,30mph+....and as the only breaking system was my hand i had a fewclose calls at the other end of each line....the course also involved a tarzan swing....which can be best described asa combination of a bungee jump..but feet first...and a giant swing......i wasnttoo sure if i actually wanted to go on it, but the guides had decided that i was going to..and clipped me in and helpfully pushed me over the edge.....it was great fun and i learnt awholenewbunch of swear wordstoo whilst dropping to the ground!....

since the adrenaline had begun i decided thati best keep it up..and the next day,whilst based at a town called lafortuna...i went canyoning....which involves scrambling down a river,jumping off rocksinto pools,and abseilingdown waterfalls....the smallest ofwhich was 65m/200ft high....again great fun..and again survived....

after a breif breakto go see another volcano and somemore lava...the next activity was white water rafting down the deltoro river....which is a class 4 river (the rating system goesup to 5..so the rapids werepretty lively)....but my boat rocked....no-one fell out,nor did we flip....well we did once on purpose as it madeanice photo.....flipping on purpose was scary enouhg,espcially as when you first surface you are also stuck under the boat,so i guess that flippingby accident would be massively scary and i was glad thatour boat was by the far the best....

those three activities wereallsuperfun, but i have had a few days of calming it down, from la fortuna we headed to san jose....where yet again had to say goodbye to people...again was supersad to do so....but some ne wand very nice people joined us,and we headed to puerto viejo, which is a small surfer town on the caribbean coast of costa rica, which is where i am now....spent yesterday on the best beach i have ever been on in my life...edged by the jungle, white sands and clear water..and amazing sun..altho i did manageto sunburnmy arse!...which really is quite uncomfortable...

thismorning i headed out to a sloth sanctuary...which was really cool, the babysloths are so cute...i wasreally quite tempted to steal one...tonight i beleive a fewmore cocktails are in order...and tomorrow i do my final border crossing into panama...

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